


The Bad Moon

by phyripo



Series: We Were Here [3]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1960s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 07:51:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12883392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phyripo/pseuds/phyripo
Summary: Turns out the town's resident crazy lady is not as crazy as everyone thought - she'sknownall along, but now that he finally listens, it might be too late.





	The Bad Moon

**Author's Note:**

> It says 1960s and technically it does take place in the sixties but it's 1969. But anyway!
> 
> Hello and welcome to another ghost story that is not quite a ghost story, inspired by a song that's actually _from_ 1969, namely [Creedence Clearwater Revival's Bad Moon Rising](https://youtu.be/zUQiUFZ5RDw)!
> 
> FEATURING  
> David - Australia  
> Angélique - Seychelles  
> (Josh - Hutt River)

If he had any pen and paper that wasn’t soaked, David would make a little list, but as it stands, he can only tick things off mentally.

Food: check, found a good amount of canned stuff. Water: no shortage of _that_. Dry clothes: nope, not for a week now. Lesson learned: fucking listen to Angélique Verlaque, Clarke. She might sound insane from time to time, but somehow, she _knows_ things.

While he is still in the house – his neighbor’s – David takes the phone off its hook in the hallway, knowing full well he won’t even hear a dial tone. The lightning has fried the electricity a week ago, and even if that hadn’t been the case, there’s water up to half his calves right now. He vaguely hopes his neighbor is safe.

Once outside, he sprints – as much he can sprint – to his car, lifting his feet above the water in the street. He must look like an idiot, but there’s no one around to see him. It doesn’t really stop him getting wet either, seeing as it’s still fucking pouring.

A helicopter passes over somewhere in the distance. The emergency services. They’ve been getting gradually closer to his town, which is good. He hopes they can get here before the situation gets any worse.

David takes the winding road into the mountains, where he and Angélique have been staying since the worst of the weather hit, about five days ago. And really, if anyone would have told him that was how he would be spending his time during the storm of the decade, he’d have laughed at them.

Once out of town, David presses play on the cassette still in his car radio. He only just got it before he was called out to Angélique’s place last Thursday.

It happened more often, people calling the station because Ms Verlaque was unnerving them again. She has a habit, and it’s a small town; people have to have something to talk about. If asked at that point in time, David would have said that Angélique was an intelligent and friendly woman who just sometimes fell victim to her own mind and would speak in doom scenarios, and he’d advise anyone not to pay attention to her when she got like that.

Now… He sighs. Well, turns out she had a point in the end, didn’t she?

Rain isn’t exactly unknown around here – clouds formed over the sea can’t cross the mountain range at the end of the peninsula and rain down on the valley completely – and sometimes the river floods, yes, but not… Like this. Not in a way that leaves the entire town covered in water, not over a week of unstoppable downpour. David has never seen anything like this before, and isn’t sure where he would be if not for the fact that he was safe with Angélique, up on the mountain.

She _knew_. And now she has been saying that there is something else coming, something bad. While he’s still skeptical, David has decided to listen to her from now on. At least about things like this.

He drums on his steering wheel, silently singing along to Fleetwood Mac while he drives up the mountain, leaving the ravaged town behind. The rain still beats on his windshield.

Angélique is standing on the porch of her bungalow when he arrives, safe from the rain under the awning, but she rushes out to help him with the supplies he got as soon as he kills the engine, and the music.

They get everything inside quickly enough, and David changes into some less damp clothes in the bathroom. He looks a little sick in the mirror, but a large part of that must be the green tiles. He doesn’t _feel_ sick. Just tired, and cold. It’s damp even inside, even here, high up where there’s no flooding.

“Hey,” Angélique says softly. She’s leaning against the doorpost when David looks, arms crossed. Her flared sleeves are wrapped around her hands as if they will keep out the chill. “How was town?”

He shrugs in response. “Empty. Wet. I hope everyone’s safe.”

She smiles a sad smile before turning her back and walking to the living room. There’s a fire burning, crackling pleasantly like the world isn’t falling to pieces outside. David sprawls out on the rug in front of it, hoping to soak up some warmth. Angélique sits down to read a book, cross-legged with her back against the couch. Her hair has been getting curlier and curlier over the past days – whatever she did to it to make it straight before must be wearing off.

David likes it.

He, surprisingly, likes _her_. She’s been levelheaded throughout this whole mess – maybe that’s something that happens when you apparently _know_ what’s going to happen, he thinks. Whatever _that_ is. He feels bad about having dismissed her all this time.

It doesn’t hurt that she is, well, a very attractive woman.

“Hey, Angélique?” he asks, and she looks up, resting her index finger halfway down the page of her book. “Can I ask something about the whole…” He gestures at nothing. “The predicting the future thing?”

She smiles a little. “It’s not so much _predicting_ , I think. I just… I look at people, or at things, every now and then, and I know stuff, and sometime that stuff hasn’t happened yet.” Her gaze skids away from David, and she chews on her full lower lip while her brow furrows.

“What do you know about me?”

“Hm?” She looks up again.

“When you look at me, what do you know about me?” he clarifies. Angélique closes her book and draws her legs up underneath herself, tugging her denim miniskirt down over her thighs when it rides up. Her legs look strong – David fancies she could wrap them around his waist and hold herself up without much trouble.

 _Wait_ , she can’t actually read minds, can she? Fucking hell. He thinks about the rain very intently.

“I know your name is David Oliver Clarke,” Angélique says. “You’re 30 years old, born January 26, 1939. You have… Two younger siblings, and honestly I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned them, considering how proud of them you are. You know your brother blames himself for that incident in ’54 that caused you to lose most hearing in your right ear, when you were teaching him how to swim. You write to him every year saying that he shouldn’t do that, and this year he’ll believe you. No one knows about the hearing loss, do they? You were afraid they wouldn’t let you join the police if they did.”

“How the fuck—” David starts, instinctively covering his ear. Only his family knows about that incident – though it’s good news Josh will finally stop getting worked up over it.

She shrugs. “Told you.” But her dark eyes flit away again, as if she’s afraid of a rejection. Hm, she doesn’t know everything.

“Angélique,” he says, “that was _boss_.”

“I— What? You really think—”

“Yeah!” He pushes himself over to her and leans against the couch as well, close enough that their legs nearly touch – his corduroys and her freckled knees only separated by a tiny sliver of brown carpet. “Wish we’d known before. Maybe you could have helped with something.”

“But you did,” she says, her voice slightly wry, but she smiles still.

“Yeah, alright.” David pushes his hair back from his face and then rests his arm on the couch behind her. Some dark curls tumble over his wrist when she turns her head to him.

“Is there nothing in the future for me?” he asks, and as he says it, he realizes they’re still pretty much in the middle of a very dangerous situation and maybe there really isn’t anything in the future for him, and then what?

However, Angélique smiles and ducks her head, biting her lower lip again. Her teeth have left indents when she looks back up at him. They’re oddly transfixing, although David would much rather he’d made them. Absently, he curls a strand of her hair around his finger while they look at each other. Is she reading him now? Is that how it works?

“There’s, uhm.” She wets her lips now, and David shifts until their legs do touch. “There’s quite a lot of me in your immediate future, actually.”

He grins. “Really? How much is a lot in this case?”

“Oh, you know.” She presses their legs together more firmly and leans over to him. He can see a sliver of green in her eyes, this close, could count the freckles dotting her warm brown skin, which glows in the firelight. He leans forward too, while he touches his fingertips to her knee and lets them trace patterns on her skin.

“Is this alright?” he asks, because even if those hippies with their free love have a good point – he thinks – he doesn’t want to anger the woman largely responsible for his continued survival. Especially not when she knows so much stuff about him.

“That’s great, but it could be better,” Angélique answers with a laugh. “I’d ask you the same thing, but…” She hooks her small fingers in the collar of his T-shirt. “I already know.”

David laughs. “Well, that’s convenient. What else do you know?” His hand slides slowly up her thigh, and she bites her lip again. Her already dark eyes are deeper now, and both of them seem more than happy to just forget about the terrible situation outside for now.

“I don’t know anything that’s very interesting in _theory_ ,” she admits.

“I guess we better get practical then,” he says, and while the wind howls outside the bungalow and the rain seems to be on the verge of breaking through the windows with its force, he kisses her. She kisses back without hesitation. Well, if she knew it was coming…

David is unsure why he’s surprised that Angélique knows exactly what he likes – hell, of course she does – and hopes she’ll forgive him that he doesn’t know her preferences in return. She laughs at him when he tells her this, not unkindly, and suggests practice.

“I know not everyone is like me,” she adds, beautifully sprawled on the couch, completely unashamed.

“Have you ever met anyone else?” David asks, curious. “Who can do… Whatever it is you do?”

She gasps gently when he trails his fingers up her leg again, this time unhindered by any fabric.

“I don’t think so. And I’m pretty sure I would have known.” Her breath hitches. “See, I do like that. You’re – you’re learning.”

“Good,” he says, and then nothing for a while.

Over the next three days, neither of them go out because it doesn’t stop raining and there is no need, and he also learns that Angélique does indeed have very strong legs – she surfs, she explains, but not at the same spot he does, and when he asks if they might go catch some waves together when this is all over, she gets a faraway look in her eyes and says she isn’t sure –, that it’s much easier to stay warm like this even if clothes are eschewed often, that Angélique likes horror movies – she can always tell what the actors have really been up to, she says, which is most amusing when it’s horror –, that she loves animals just as he does, and that it would be very possible for him to fall in love with her, given just a little time.

She can’t say if he will. It doesn’t always work in a straightforward way, apparently. Some people are more past than future, “and you,” she tells David, “are very much the present, in a lot of ways.”

He could almost forget about the world falling to pieces outside.

And then, in the morning of the fourteenth day after it began raining, it abruptly stops.

Everything around the bungalow is soggy, and there’s no way the road will be in any condition to drive on, so they aren’t going anywhere, but it’s _dry_. The sky is _clear_. And anyway, staying a little longer is just fine by David.

He writes a letter to his siblings that he can post when this is over – they have got to be worried if they saw the news from over here – but can’t finish it, because Angélique comes practically running into the living room with a coat half on and waving a shoe at him while yelling that they need to leave the house _immediately_. He opens his mouth to ask a question, like _what the hell_ , but has thrown the shoe at him and dashed off already.

Alright. He’ll ask questions later. The lesson about listening to Angélique has been learned.

In more ways than one, he thinks, with a grin at the shoe now on his foot.

It starts the moment he sets foot outside. The slightest tremor, like a train passing close by, but there are no trains anywhere in the mountains, and they wouldn’t be running right now anyway, so it’s something else. David clenches his jaw.

“Lique?” A nickname, caught on quickly – it happens often, with him.

She’s ahead of him, hurrying further up the mountain, jumping from stone to wet stone, but stops and looks over her shoulder. Her beautiful face is set in a grim line, her hair – now all bunched up in tight curls – swept away from her face and into a ponytail.

“Hurry,” she says. “I… I’m not sure what’s coming, but we need to be somewhere else when it does.”

The ground shakes beneath their feet as they climb, making it more and more difficult to keep going, and David wonders if it was the right thing to do, to leave the bungalow. They don’t get earthquakes around here, really, and he’s not sure what you’re _supposed_ to do. On the other hand, Angélique knows… A lot of things.

They reach a stream that’s probably a little mountain brook when the weather has been normal. Now, it roars by with deafening noise. Angélique stops on its banks and pushes her hands into her hair as if in desperation.

“What’s wrong?” David asks, then repeats himself slightly louder to be heard over the roar of the water.

“This!” Angélique gestures frantically at the water. “I know what’s on the other side, I just… I don’t know if…” She swallows hard, and David reaches for her, tugging her against his chest. He rests his chin on her hair, she pushes her nose against the skin of his chest exposed by his shirt.

“Do we need to get to the other side?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I can’t tell.”

“It’s alright. That’s how the other side lives, Lique.”

She laughs, wrapping her arms around his waist, hands clenching on his back. The stream sprays cold water on them, but they’ve been damp for the past two weeks; it doesn’t matter anymore.

Another rumble shakes the ground, and Angélique holds on tighter. David strokes his fingers up and down her spine and plants his feet firmly on the rock. What do they do now?

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” he hears Angélique murmur, and then she’s tugging him down insistently until they practically sprawl on the rock. A second later, a spray of debris sails overhead, scattering among the trees. The ground starts to shake again, and it doesn’t stop.

The forest creaks and groans around them, and the water gets even wilder. David and Angélique remain seated on the rock, even though he feels like they should be _doing_ something. This is nature. You can’t stop fucking nature.

The shaking gets worse. A tree groans and falls over on the other side of the stream, and just like that, more go down, and more and more and David can only cling to Angélique when they hear an almighty crash from just below them, and he knows.

“The bungalow.”

He feels her nod against his shoulder where she’s hiding her face.

Then, another noise. An insistent, booming rumble that gets louder with the second. He tilts his left ear towards it.

“What’s that?” he asks anxiously.

“The dam broke,” Angélique says, and then water crashes around them, hitting like an icy wall and sweeping them both off the rock and _away_.

David tries to grab something, anything, blindly reaching out with one hand while the other refuses to let go of Angélique, who clings back just as hard in return.

A branch or something, sliding by his hand. He grabs it, and it holds, and he can pull them out of the water just far enough that they can breathe. The current still tries to drag him down, rips at his clothes and his shoe – just the one, he seems to have lost the other, but Angélique is still here, even if she’s apologizing into his chest for not knowing, for not having predicted.

“It’s okay,” he says, raising his voice over the water. “It’s not your fault, you can’t predict everything!”

“It’s not about that,” she replies. “It’s not about this, David.”

When he looks down at her, her eyes are rimmed with red in a way that isn’t just the icy mountain water’s doing. She’s crying.

“We’re fine.” He grips the thing he’s holding tighter, reassuring himself. “When this dies down, we’ll be alright. I’m sure!”

She closes her eyes. He wants to kiss her, but he can’t, not like this. Everything is heavy, but he needs to hold it up. Needs to hold _her_ up.

“We’ll be fine,” he repeats weakly, speaking into the middle distance. His fingers are going numb. Angélique didn’t predict this. Did she?

 _Fuck_.

“Lique?”

She looks up at him with a sad line to her mouth, as if she knows the question he’s going to ask. Come to think of it, she probably fucking does.

“You know how this ends, don’t you?”

Slowly, _slowly_ , she nods. Her expressive eyes are deep and dark, her fingers cold when she splays them on his neck. Curls plaster to her forehead, her throat. She’s still beautiful. And she _knows_. She knows.

And really, David also knows.

He lets go.

**Author's Note:**

> _Don't go 'round tonight_   
>  _It's bound to take your life_   
>  _There's a bad moon on the rise_


End file.
